Radio Plays

By 1954, Edmund (Ed) J.A. Stone had completed and published another five books. In 1952, he began writing radio plays for the BBC, with nine of them broadcast live from the BBC Midland Home Service Studios in Birmingham. One of his earlier plays, Crime on the Sands, aired at 7:00 PM on Thursday, October 28, 1954. Several actors who played character roles in his plays went on to become well-known figures, including Donald Pleasance (OBE) in Crime on the Sands, Billy Whitelaw (CBE) in An Affair of Honour, and John Laurie in A Pearl in the Hand (best known for his role in the long-running BBC series Dad’s Army).

Many of his books and plays were also written and broadcast in other languages. However, after the passing of his wife, Josie, in 1959, he had to take on a job with a stable income to support his children. He could hardly ask the bank for a loan while waiting for his next book to be published. Ironically, in 1959, his son was 13 years old—the same age Austin had been when he lost his own mother.

Years later, in memory of his father, his son Edmund (Ed) J.A. Stone decided to ensure Missing, Murder Suspected was finally published. Setting aside a family tree history book he had been working on, he spent two years transcribing and editing the manuscript before successfully self-publishing it just before Christmas 2017. The book is a true crime trilogy based on English crimes committed during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Initially, it was assumed that the book had been written in the 1950s, but while editing the third and final story—set in 1944—there was a reference to Britain abolishing the death penalty in 1965. Additionally, one of the defense lawyers in the book remarked, “And here we are 30 years later,” suggesting that Austin likely wrote the book shortly before his death in 1979. This may explain why the book had not been published earlier.